


Where Sharks Live

by cockymclaughlin



Series: Distribution and Habitat [2]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Assassin!Link, Blood, Death, Gun Violence, Hand Jobs, M/M, Murder, Thief!Rhett
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-07-25 23:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20034427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockymclaughlin/pseuds/cockymclaughlin
Summary: In the distance, there’s a beach, crashing waves and all, and Rhett is almost certain Link plucked this place out of a hat of a dozen other places just like it.Like playing Mad Libs, he’d provided adjectives and gave himself options, landed on Malta Island as if he’d known all along. ‘Pack for a while,’ he’d said, mouth curled up in a consuming smile





	1. The Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> this is a sequel to [distribution and habitat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9553553/chapters/21601208), and won't make much sense without reading that one first. 
> 
> you can find me on tumblr over [here](https://cockymclaughlin.tumblr.com).

He's got blood, sharp and sour and metallic, right on the tip of his tongue. 

It isn't his own, and it isn't Link's, and he doesn't know exactly what that information means. There’s a body to his left, an alarm going off that means he needs to move before it stops going off, and Link is screaming something at him that doesn’t pierce its way through the ringing in his ears, the alarm, the pounding of his own beating, bleeding heart in his chest. 

And then in a sickening second, there are hands on his shoulders, pushing him along, a voice, desperate and loud, begging him to  _ run, fucking run, come on, Rhett. _

They fucked up, this time. 

The chunk of life they’d carved out of existence for themselves is imploding around them because of Link’s cockiness, because of Rhett’s inability to tell him no. 

He can taste blood on the tip of his tongue, and it isn’t his own. 

\---

“I had a dream we got caught the other night,” Rhett tells him. The condensation on his glass is running off the side of his palm, and he wipes it on his jeans before looking up, taking Link in.

He’s got this ridiculous hat on, huge sunglasses, fluorescent pink shorts with a white shirt covered in ice cream cones. He looks good. He’s tan, relaxed. There’s an actual smile on his face, lopsided and a little hazy as he sips his drink. 

In the distance, there’s a beach, crashing waves and all, and Rhett is almost certain Link plucked this place out of a hat of a dozen other places just like it. 

Like playing Mad Libs, he’d provided adjectives and gave himself options, landed on Malta Island as if he’d known all along. ‘Pack for a while,’ he’d said, mouth curled up in a consuming smile.

Link looks at him, sunglasses hiding his expression. “Did we die?” 

Rhett shrugs. “I woke up before I found out.” 

“Then it was a win,” Link says, sure as anything, taking another gulp of his drink and smacking his lips around it dramatically. “I told you no thinking about work on vacation. We’re supposed to be getting away, enjoying ourselves.” 

It’s easy enough for Link to think like that, Rhett supposes. It’s easy enough for him to actually believe it’s possible, but Rhett knows otherwise. 

Rhett knows Link’s burner phone goes off at least once a day, and that Link answers it with a flippant, ‘I’m on vacation, find someone else,’ before he’s ending the call. He never turns it off. 

It’s almost delicately hot, just enough of a stickiness in the air to leave Rhett wishing he’d worn shorts today, too. That salty, crispness the ocean provides to the area makes it worth it, he thinks. And when he drains the rest of his drink, he tells Link, “I’m enjoying myself.” 

It’s not a promise. Not really, anyway, but Link still eyes him like it is, giving him a look and then mimicking him almost perfectly, draining his glass, placing it on the table. A mirror image. 

Then, he’s standing, adjusting his hat, and saying, “Let’s take a walk. It’s too nice here to stay in one place for too long.” 

Rhett stands, wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans, and follows. 

It’s been nearly a year since Frank, and the echoes of his screams are just now starting to fade from the inside of Rhett’s skull. He’s just starting to relax. There’s a certain undercurrent between him and Link, now. It’s like standing on a tightrope, watching the flames lick at both ends. 

He’ll fall, eventually, but for now, he’s having too much fun keeping his balance. 

Link, on the other hand, is lighting his own flames and cackling as Rhett tries desperately to put them out. 

“Are you worried about something?” Link asks, when they’re down a familiar road, buildings that Rhett has come to know like they’re his own with how long they’ve been here. 

It’s been months, tracing patterns of themselves into the concrete, the buildings, losing themselves in the culture of the people around them. And with the comfort of familiar buildings, Rhett decides to be honest: “A little, I guess.” 

“They won’t find him, you know,” Link says, voice pitching low, serious in a way he isn’t often.

Link is accustomed to being aloof, to pretending everything is fine with a loaded gun in his hand. 

He’s accustomed to always having the upper hand. And with Rhett, it’s different. 

With Rhett, he’s on equal ground with someone, and it leaves him a little unsteady on that tightrope of his. 

“I know,” Rhett settles on, tongue moving around his mouth, feeling his teeth, like he’s trying to convince himself he’s still in one piece. This conversation always leaves him feeling a little hollowed out. “I trust you.” 

“It ain’t my first rodeo, Rhett.” There’s a laugh that doesn’t quite make it all the way out of Link’s lungs, landing in a splat on the ground in front of them. 

The air around him is sticky, and Rhett squints in the sun, too bright even through his sunglasses. Their apartment isn’t very far now, and he hopes the conversation doesn’t make it through the front door. 

But Link says, “Forget about him, okay? Or at least try to. Are you even trying to?” 

“Yes,” Rhett hisses, like Link is digging his thumbs into an open wound. His shoulder throbs in sympathy. “It’s not just him.” 

“Then, what?” He tugs his sunglasses off, looks at Rhett with a tan face, patches of white around his eyes. “What’s bothering you?” 

Through a heavy breath, Rhett tells him, “Turn your phone off. No more calls.” 

“Done.” Like it’s that easy. “Anything else?” 

“No, that’s it.” 

Link is smiling up at him, reaching over to lace their fingers together. The heat of his palm is nice, and Rhett revels in it, loses himself in that feeling. This is easy. This is good, and around the salt in the air, his lungs feel lighter. 

Their front door is there before he knows it, and the conversation drops off of both of them as they step inside. Rhett heads straight for the kitchen, needing a glass of water, something to fidget with before he loses his cool. 

This vacation has been great. It’s been peaceful and wonderful, all up until today when this unsteady feeling settled in his bones. 

All up until that dream. 

He can still taste the blood on his tongue, if he tries hard enough. He drinks two glasses of water just for good measure, placing the cup in the sink right as Link is walking into the room. He’s got his burner phone in his hand. 

“Watch me,” he’s saying, and Rhett feels like this is more intense than it needs to be, watching him hold the power button like he’s suffocating someone. 

Rhett rolls his shoulders uncomfortably. 

The phone shuts off, and Link tosses it onto the counter, next to the bowl they’ve got bananas and apples in. It’ll stay there, Rhett knows, because Link doesn’t go back on his promises. 

This was a promise. 

“Thank you,” he says, because he feels like he should. 

Link grins, nods. “Now, forget about it, okay? All of it. I want you here with me and only me.” 

‘Not the corpses of the people I’ve killed,’ are the words that don’t quite make it out of his throat, but Rhett knows they’re there. But he guesses this particular corpse is the one he killed, isn’t it? 

And it’s not even Frank that’s getting to him. The images behind his eyelids are blurred and skewed now, morphed so far into pitch blackness that he doesn’t even think about it often at all. He had a nightmare, that’s it. 

It wasn’t even about Frank. It was about Link, about this. It was about what they do, together. 

They haven’t been on a job in months, since exactly nineteen days before they left for vacation, and Rhett’s subconscious is reminding him that they’re not invincible. They aren’t above the law. 

They aren’t  _ winning _ , as Link put it. 

What they are is careful. 

Eventually, they’ll fuck up. They aren’t perfect. Someone is going to send them on the wrong job, or Link will get the timing off or Rhett will set off an alarm or  _ something _ . They’re careful, but they aren’t bulletproof. 

So he drinks another glass of water and watches Link bite into a plum, more purple than any other plums Rhett’s ever seen in his life. His teeth sink in, and Rhett can’t help it when he groans. 

He catches Link’s grin as he licks the juice from his lips, teeth speckled with the purple skin. 

Rhett has barely a second of memory of those same teeth sinking into Frank’s arm, biting a chunk out of him, and he says, “What did he taste like?” 

The words are heavy on his tongue, impossible to swallow back down, and Link grins again. He shrugs. “Spit him out before I could really taste anything but blood. Would’a puked if I wasn’t so angry.” 

Rhett nods. 

Link takes another bite of the plum. 

“They won’t find him?” 

He’s closer, suddenly, the plum placed on the counter, and Link is looking at him carefully. “Baby, they won’t find him. Nobody is even gonna come looking for him, I promise.” 

Rhett wants to believe him. It’s more likely than anything he’s coming up with, that’s for sure. Frank was a terrible person. They did the world a favor. More people wanted him dead than Rhett can even count, he’s sure of it. 

It’s just a sour taste in the back of his throat now that Link has brought it up. 

But this time he asks, “Nobody’s looking for you, right?” 

This time, it tugs a laugh out of him. High and sweet, and he’s picking his plum back up, leaning against the counter. He sinks his teeth in, letting the juice dribble down his chin this time. 

And he says, “Probably not.” 

“Probably?” 

“I’ve killed a lot of people, Rhett. Someone is probably pissed off out there,” he points out, nonchalant and honest. “But I’m quick, and I’m good at my job.” 

“I know,” Rhett promises. He does know. He’s seen him. He’s quick, and he’s good at his job. “I know, I just--.” 

“Hey, it’s okay. They won’t find us here, even if they’re looking for us. But they aren’t looking,” Link tells him. “Nobody would be that stupid.” 

Is it stupidity or desperation that would lead them to that point? Link has left more people bleeding and broken and dead without the dignity of an explanation or respect than even Rhett knows. Cockiness will only get them so far, even if Link has the credentials to back himself up. 

With Link’s phone turned off in the middle of them, Rhett feels better. It’s the only connection they have to their jobs, and it’s off. It can’t start ringing in the middle of Link trying to get Rhett’s pants down his thighs or when they’re cooking dinner together. It can’t ring as they’re waiting for the coffee to finish dripping in the morning or in the evening when they’re watching the sunset from the balcony in their bedroom. 

Link chose him, and that’s what sits heavily on Rhett’s chest. 

Link chose him a long time ago, if he’s honest, and it’s always a good, weighted feeling. 

Still, Rhett can’t help it when he says, “Someone could be that stupid. You don’t know that for sure, Link.” 

It earns him an eye, careful and right on the cusp of frustrated, before Link is opening his mouth to tell him, “Then I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all, Rhett, anybody who so much as looks at us wrong.” 

Someone-- a grocer, here, old and kind and tan-- once asked Link what he did for a living, to be such a happy, healthy young man, so full of life. He’d said he worked very closely with people in the funeral business, that he saw death up-close and personally so often it was easy to forget it was such a big, scary thing at the end of all of this. The old, kind, tan grocer had smiled an impossibly white smile and given them two pineapples for free. 

Rhett watches with guilt in his eyes as Link pulls the container of cut pineapple from the refrigerator, biting into a piece of that man’s kindness without a care in the world. He asks, “How would you do it? Rip their throats out with your teeth?” 

Link snorts. “You’re real caught up on that whole biting thing, aren’t you?” 

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Rhett says. “It was gross, man.” 

Link nods emphatically. He bites into another chunk of pineapple, and Rhett damn near winces. “Won’t do it again. It was a weird texture. Hated it.” 

He’s chewing around his words, shoving his fingers in his mouth to lick at the juice slipping down to his wrist. When he plops the container down on the counter next to Rhett, braces his elbows there to support him as he stares up at him, he offers Rhett a piece. 

Leaning down, Rhett bites the chunk in half from between Link’s fingers. His eyes crinkle in the corners, teasing at a smile, as he tosses the piece Rhett left into his mouth. 

“How would you do it?” 

The question sits like acid in the base of Rhett’s stomach. It churns and eats away at the lining of his organs until he feels it seeping all the way through him, into his veins, the marrow of his bones. He’s tainted with it, filled to the brim with wrongness. 

When he turns, looks away from Link like his eyes are burning from staring at the sun for too long, he gets a hum, quiet and accusing. He hears Link bite into another piece of pineapple, hears him suck more juice from his fingers. It’s almost grating, almost irritating, and Rhett thinks maybe he should go for a walk by himself, take a few steps away from Link for a second. 

The thing is, they’ve been inseparable since Frank. 

Link watched him pull the trigger, and he fell, tripped, stumbled directly into a weird domesticity with him. They wash dishes together, brushing elbows and splashing water on each other. 

They share a bed. Rhett’s got more clothes at Link’s house than his own, has forgotten the layout of his own apartment. And sometimes he thinks the reason he stays at Link’s house so often is so he can keep trying to rub the stain of Frank’s blood out of the floorboards, but nobody else seems to see it. 

He’s a real Lady Macbeth, kneeling over the shadow of Frank’s corpse and willing it all to go away. Except it won’t, and there isn’t any blood, and Rhett still hears his screams echoing through the house if they let it get too quiet. 

And here Link is, asking him how he’d kill again. 

How he’d kill for  _ Link _ . 

Link spent months convincing Rhett that he should kill Frank, and he was right. That was the only way out. He never would have won, never would have gotten closure, if Link were the one pulling the trigger, but it doesn’t mean that Rhett is a killer. 

It doesn’t mean that he’s like Link. 

“With my hands,” he says, echoing an old conversation of theirs, one he hasn’t thought about for so long it almost tastes stale on his tongue. And then, reaching over to grab more pineapple, he sighs, “I wouldn’t kill anyone, Link. That’s your job.” 

“You’d just steal every penny out of their pockets, right?” 

It almost sounds pointed on the ends, like Link’s mouth knows he shouldn’t be saying the words but can’t help it. Rhett spares him the dirty look, pushes himself off the edge of the counter, and tells Link, “I’m going take a shower.” 

Hot water doesn’t wash the blood away, either. He knew that already. He’s been scrubbing at his hands for months, wasting water in a drought just to drown out his own guilt. It doesn’t get to him often, but any time Link’s mouth makes shapes like he’s going to bring it up, Rhett loses himself for a second. 

His memories echo through his bones, hollow him out, and force him into recognizing his own vein of violence that’s tracing its way down to whatever part of him leaves him falling in love with an assassin. 

It’s easy to categorize his life. There was childhood, and then there wasn’t. He was growing up, and then he landed here. He landed right into Link’s grubby hands. Everything that ever happened to him was pushing him here. 

No, not happened to him. 

Everything that he ever made happen was pushing him here. 

He can take as many hot showers as he wants, they won’t ever change that fact about him. From the second he accepted that job all those years ago, when he was just some baby-faced college kid, he was signing his deal with the devil. 

But that’s not entirely right, either. Link isn’t the devil. He wishes he was, but he isn’t. 

By the time Rhett gets out of the shower, his hands are pruney, and he still doesn’t feel any better about any of this. Something is settled wrongly in the pit of his stomach. The house is quiet, but Link is still here. He knows he is, is so used to the feeling of his presence that there’s a shift in the pattern of the air when it’s gone. 

Rhett finds him in the living room. 

When Link had suggested this vacation, with bright eyes, on his knees in front of Rhett in the living room, he’d told Rhett they needed to get away. They needed to get some sun on their cheeks, sand beneath their feet. They needed to feel life and how it courses just under the surface of the earth. Here, in the living room of their apartment in the middle of Malta Island, Link is still somehow the most  _ alive  _ thing Rhett has ever seen. 

He’s got his head back, phone on his chest as it softly plays music that filters through the room, eyes shut. Rhett would think he’s sleeping, if it weren’t for his fingers tapping out the beat on the couch. And when Rhett walks into the room, he says, “Good shower?” without opening his eyes. 

Rhett nods, and he knows Link can tell without having to open his eyes. 

“Will you talk to me now?” he asks, and Rhett bristles just a little.

Rhett grunts in answer, everything feeling sticky and uncomfortable all of a sudden. He plops himself down on the couch next to Link, putting a hand on Link’s thigh for comfort, to ground himself. 

“You alright?” Link asks, blunt and honest, and Rhett nods again. Link’s eyes are open this time, and he’s looking at Rhett without picking his head up. “Do you want to go home? Cut this short?” 

“No,” Rhett promises, scrubbing at his face with his free hand. “No, I just had a nightmare, is all.” 

Link hums. “Some nightmare, to leave you this uncomfortable all day.” There’s a pause, a beat of silence that slots itself into place between them. Rhett almost takes his hand off of Link’s thigh, but then Link is asking him, “You ever gonna figure out if you think I’m a bad person or not?” 

The question is-- 

It’s off-putting. The ease with which Link asked it, how he didn’t need to think about how to say it, just whether or not he  _ should _ . Rhett’s fingers tighten for just long enough to have Link humming, as if he took that as an answer. 

Rhett clears his throat, working around the tightness, the uncomfortable feeling settled there. He has an answer, but he doesn’t know how to say it. His tongue feels too big in his mouth. His palms are sweating, and it’s been nearly a year since Frank, and he doesn’t know how to say what he wants to say. 

He doesn’t know how Link will react to his answer. 

Because Link has done this more times than Rhett has ever even thought about it. He’s found himself in this exact spot thirty-four times, now. To Link, there’s a comfort in this, a power that Rhett can’t seem to tap into. 

Mostly, Rhett feels flayed open. He feels like  _ he’s  _ spread open on Link’s floor, with his face beaten all to hell, choking on his own blood. Or, at the very least, he feels like he deserves that fate. 

Instead, he’s got Link’s hand grabbing his own, lacing their fingers together. He doesn’t crush, doesn’t break. He brings it up to his mouth, kisses the back of Rhett’s with dry, gentle lips. 

Like a bird in a cage, Rhett’s heart rattles around painfully. Everything is twisted up inside of him, and Link untangles every bit of it with that one motion. 

Up until today, everything has been perfect here. In the middle of the night, his subconscious put an end to that. And now Link has a question dangling on the end of a noose in between them, and Rhett’s throat finally works itself around the answer he was worried he’d never be able to give: “You’re not a bad person. I’m trying to figure out if I am or not.” 

Link gives him a moment, lets the words find their place in the conversation they’ve been start-stopping for a couple hours, now. They nestle themselves somewhere between Rhett’s question about the biting and this moment, when Link says, “You’re not a bad person, Rhett. You just keep making shitty friends.” 

“What if--” and he swallows a couple times, shakes his head. “I know Frank was a bad person. I don’t regret-- killing him.” 

“You sound real sure about that,” Link teases, a laugh bubbling out of him. His phone falls off his chest, to his lap. “What if what, Rhett?” 

And that question is the one that keeps eating at him. That’s the one that keeps running through him like acid, like fire eating away at every inch of him. He feels it on the tip of his tongue like a swollen tastebud, feels it in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. He doesn’t want to say it. 

He doesn’t want to put it out into the universe, risk having it come true just by planting the seed. So he shakes his head. 

“Nothing,” he says. “What are we doing this afternoon?” 

Link shoots him a grin, looking at him out of the corner of his eyes. He plucks his phone from his lap, puts it on the arm of the couch. Then, with a heavy breath, he pats his thighs in suggestion. 

This game is well-played by them. What he’d usually be doing is getting into Link’s lap, straddling his thighs and leaning in to get a taste of the lazy grin stretching across his face. And god, does it taste good. Rhett knows it does, but he can’t seem to get the lead out of his limbs, get them to move like Link’s asking him to. 

So what he does instead is raises an eyebrow, pointed and hoping it gets his point across. 

Link is smart. He’s quick. 

He’s moving as Rhett is settling into the couch a little more, hoping to empty his head, lose himself in the pressure of Link’s body against his as he sits in Rhett’s lap, thighs bracketing Rhett’s own. 

The curve of his ass is begging for Rhett’s hands, and when they find their way there, Link sighs, leans forward to bury his face in Rhett’s neck. Against his skin, he murmurs, “You’re a good boy, you know that?” 

“Yeah?” Rhett asks, turning to press his mouth to any part of Link he can. He doesn’t want to talk anymore, but he listens, anyway. 

Link nods, mouth latching on to the curve of Rhett’s shoulder, wet and nothing but teeth. His tongue wiggles against fuzzy fabric, and Rhett hisses at the sensation, the bite. It’s almost good, almost has his cock twitching in his pants. 

And then, when Link is really biting down, hard enough to sting, hard enough to have Rhett heaving with it, he’s thrumming all over. His body is alight, attuned to every stitch of Link’s chemical makeup. 

When he pulls away, he’s got to slurp up drool that threatens to fall into Rhett’s shirt, and his lips are shiny and slick. It should be obscene, but it just leaves Rhett a little shaky. He’s red in the face already, hand trailing down Rhett’s torso until he’s cupping over where he’s thick and heavy just from this. Rhett’s shoulder aches, and he doesn’t know if it’s in loss or in pain, but he takes it for what it is. 

Link’s hand is firm, steady, a goddamn tease as he squeezes, cruel and soothing, and Rhett arches, bucks, searches for more. His dry throat works around a heavy, “ _ Link _ ,” and he hears the shrill sound of Link’s phone going off in his pocket. 

Link arches an eyebrow at him, licks at his lips, a challenge. Rhett can’t get his protest to get from behind his teeth in time, is watching in technicolor as Link undoes his pants, tugs his cock out, and uses his other hand to grab his phone from his back pocket, slide the green button across the screen, and answer it with a, “Hello?”

It takes Rhett an embarrassingly long time to realize that he’s not holding it to his ear, is holding it steady in front of him. And he can hear the conversation from both ends, once he separates it from the thudding of his own pulse in his ears. 

There’s a voice he’s heard a couple of times in passing, when they’re dropping Jade off, when they were leaving for this trip. Link isn’t paying him much attention anymore, is cackling a little wildly, a bit hysterically, is turning the phone to face Rhett, with his hand still jerking Rhett off slowly and surely and so  _ fucking  _ good. 

His bleary eyes take a second to realize what he’s seeing. 

It’s a mess of colors, blues and purples and reds. So much fucking red, and then there’s Josh. 

There’s Josh and his big, bright face, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. Link turns the phone back towards himself as he’s saying, “He kept saying something about finding you. I tried to get a name, but he wouldn’t give me one.” 

“Please don’t feed him to my dog,” Link says, and his thumb runs over the head of Rhett’s cock. 

Rhett’s hips twitch up, his breath catching in his throat. Josh asks around a laugh, “Am I interrupting something?” 

“Yeah,” Link tells him. “What did he look like? I can’t make anything out.” 

“Did you know a baseball bat will take chunks out of a head if you swing it hard enough? It’s really gross.” 

And Rhett realizes. 

That was a body. 

Those colors were a body, beaten and broken and dead. 

His cock is leaking in the palm of Link’s hand, and now all he can see is the swirling of those colors. 

“Someone put a hit out on you,” he says, sitting up, batting Link’s hand away. He gets a tsk in complaint, but he cuts him a pair of eyes. As he’s tucking himself away, watching Link flop down onto the couch beside him, he says again, “Someone put a fucking hit out on you, Link.” 

There’s a laugh, and it’s ringing in his ears as he stands, makes his way out of the apartment and into the fresh air outside. He can’t shake the image of smears of red and purples and blues out of his head. 

Someone put a hit out on Link. 

They’re on fucking vacation on Malta Island, and Link’s got a price on his fucking head. 


	2. Empty Caves

In the end, they don’t get plane tickets. They don’t go back home. 

They send the landlord of the apartment a few thousand dollars and let him know they’re extending their lease for a handful of months. Rhett’s skin never stops crawling. 

Link, on the other hand, looks so positively pleased with himself that Rhett wants to ask if he heard what Josh said, if he knows what’s going on. But that would be silly, because Link has never wanted anything in life more than he wanted this exact thing to happen to him. He’s got a game to play now. 

And everyone in the room knows he’s going to win. Everyone knows he’s got a gun tucked under his belt, blood that isn’t his own dripping out of his nose. The bones in his hands are already broken, and he’s counting on the other person getting the first punch just so he can say he gave them a head start. 

He’s a narcissist. He’s draped in silver and gold, dripping with power that slips down the curves and dips of his body as if he were born exactly like he is today. Someone wants him dead? Good. That means he’s important enough for it to matter that he’s alive. 

Malta Island feels bland, suddenly. It’s mush in his mouth. The breeze is no longer comforting-- it tickles the sides of his face. The sun is too hot, too sticky. The fruit is turning sour on his tongue. 

Link, with his pink shorts and his tan tinged red, is fraying his nerves at the ends. 

Rhett wants to go home. 

Today, they’re meeting someone Link knows. It isn’t a job, but it feels like one. Especially when Link picks out Rhett’s clothes for him, helps him get dressed as though Rhett is going to do it wrong, and tucks a handgun into a holster Rhett had only barely registered Link strapping across his chest. He knows this song and dance well by now, but he’s hardly participating this time. An annoyed sound is growing in the dip of Link’s throat as he manhandles Rhett around, trying desperately to use force to get him to cooperate. 

Instead, Rhett lets his arms hang uselessly at his sides, face slack and uninterested. 

“Oh, fuck off, Rhett,” Link hisses, hands landing, palms open, on Rhett’s chest in an offensive move. He’s hoping to move solid ground with just the flats of his palms, and Rhett isn’t buying into it. 

It isn’t a fight that he’s looking for. There isn’t fear coursing through his veins anymore. This is just his resolution. His resignation, maybe. He’s here and he isn’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean he has to participate. Maybe if he spends the whole time barely hanging on, it won’t feel like he's’ sunk his fingers into anyone’s sinewy insides. 

Maybe he can sleep dreamlessly. 

Link’s anger permeates off of him in waves just like it always has, and Rhett doesn’t say anything. Even as Link sighs heavily, fills the room with disdain that grows like weeds along the walls of their temporary home, Rhett stays neutral. 

Where Link is crashing waves, tearing at sand, Rhett is stagnant water, turning foul and poisonous. 

For just a fleeting moment, as he’s curling his legs up to his chest to squeeze into the taxi they end up taking, Rhett wonders if he should call his mom. He wonders if he should hear her voice one last time. 

Because they’re going to die, is the thing. All of this feels like they’re making funeral arrangements for themselves, and he can’t help it when he asks, “Do you still talk to your family?” in the back of a taxi with a very friendly man wondering too loudly with his facial expressions if they should be trusted. 

He gets a look in answer, firm and not really anything other than infuriating. Link’s mouth never makes a move to say anything, and Rhett lets the question settle around them uncomfortably. It’s what Link deserves, feeling so smug about this, when Rhett feels like he could rattle to pieces any second now. 

Sometimes he wonders if he could quit this. 

They’d talked about it when they first met, that lifetime ago in Link’s living room, a gun pointed at him. It’s too much like fun for Link to ever stop, but Rhett spends more time than he’ll ever admit thinking about stepping away and never returning. 

He’s got enough money to live comfortably just about anywhere in the world that he wanted to. He could buy Stevie a house wherever she wanted; he could pay off his parents’ debts without a problem. 

Fuck, he could go to college, get an honest job instead of spending the rest of his life worrying holes into the hems of all his shirts. 

It’s not that he’s scared. It isn’t fear anymore. 

He’s apprehensive. 

Link’s hand lands on his thigh, and it feels wrong. His fingers feel too thin, too bony, like claws digging into flesh. And when he flashes Rhett a smile, his teeth look too sharp. 

Rhett doesn’t want to do this anymore. 

But they’re pulling up to the address Link had given the taxi, piling out in a tangle of long limbs onto the street, and Rhett is letting Link’s voice echo through his skull when he says, “Keep your senses about you in here, yeah?” 

It’s only then that the pressure of the gun on his side has him recoiling. 

He wraps his fingers around Link’s bicep, tells him, “I’m taking you down with me, I hope you know that.” 

Link shows his teeth, but it isn’t a smile, not really. 

“Right back atcha, brother.” 

They’re at a restaurant, colorful and mostly outdoor seating. It’s obviously a tourist area, families milling about, smiles plastered on their faces in the salty air. In a sea of straw hats and cargo shorts, they make their way through the throng of tables with the confidence of two men who know exactly why they’re here and what they’re doing. 

Inside, it feels roomy. It’s open and bright, sunlight filtering through the windows. There’s music playing just loudly enough to be heard through the bustle of the lunch rush, and Rhett can smell familiar foods being cooked in the kitchen. He stays close to Link, watching the way he’s scanning the building, looking for exists. 

Looking for anyone else who may have a gun on them. 

Rhett can’t imagine conducting much business here, with how many people are going about their days like normal. There’s no reason to suspect anything but normalcy, and Rhett’s stomach turns with jealousy, a craving for something he hadn’t realized he’d wanted. As he sinks into a big, wicker chair next to Link, he realizes he’s being introduced. 

A woman, young and attractive with unnatural red hair reaches across the table to shake his hand. When he greets her with a polite, “Rhett McLaughlin-- nice you meet you,” her reply is curved around edges in a southern accent he’d nearly forgotten existed. 

“Well, aren’t you a polite boy.” She smiles like she’s being paid for it, and then turns her attention to Link. “Heard you’re in trouble.” 

“Heard you could help me,” Link counters, and he leans back, dripping in confidence that almost feels unnecessary. 

Emily smiles that same smile, more teeth this time, and says, “What exactly’s got you needing my help, Neal?” 

There’s a shrug, and a shift, and Link raises his eyebrows before he’s saying, “There’s a price on my head, apparently.” 

“And a body in your fridge, if Josh is telling the truth.” 

“Man, I asked him not to keep it in anything that I keep my food in,” Link says with disgust spooling out of his lips before he can stop it. 

This time, Emily laughs, loud and pleased, and she’s telling him, “Oh, we all know you live off of cereal and peanut butter. He’d be doing you a favor if he fileted you a few pieces and put them in your freezer.” 

“Gosh,” Link cringes, shaking his head. “Coming over for dinner?” 

“Maybe I will,” Emily says, shrugging. And then she’s sucking in a heavy breath, looking around them. Rhett notices her meeting eyes with a heavyset man sitting at the bar to the left of their table. He notices the necklace on the bartender’s chest, and the watch on the man sitting at the very end, three chairs down from Emily’s friend. 

He says, “Do y’all know each other?” 

“Link and I go way back,” Emily tells him, waving a hand his way. It’s comforting. It reminds him of his mom. 

“And that guy over there?” 

Her eyes meet his, then. She raises one, reaches across the table to pick up a half-empty glass and take a sip before she’s wiping at her lips to fix her lipstick and saying, “ Someone knows how to case a joint.” 

And then, as if something occurs to her, “Oh, shit. You’re the theif. I get it now.” 

“Emily,” Link says, his tone low and careful, scolding, and Rhett wonders, for just a second, exactly how well they know each other. He wonders exactly what Link told her to get her here. 

“I get it now,” Emily says again, more pointed this time. She gives Link a look before she tells him, “He any good?” 

Link shrugs, squirms a bit in his chair. 

Blind with annoyance, with defiance, Rhett fills in his spaces with, “I’m good enough that he didn’t kill me.” 

This seems to grab her attention, and she’s passing her tongue across the front of her teeth as her face lights up. 

Next to him, Link’s entire body goes taut, and he’s radiating anger that Rhett can feel vibrating off of him, bloating the air around them. 

Emily smiles, says, “I’ll make you a deal, Neal.” 

\-- 

Life shifts ever so slightly to the left. Things don’t quite line up anymore, but they can’t force them apart, either. They become just a little bit stuck like this, with their house mostly like before, but with two guards at all times. They sit outside, in cars or walking around the neighborhood as inconspicuous as possible. Rhett doesn’t know where they sleep, and he doesn’t care enough to ask. If he can pretend they aren’t there, then maybe one day they won’t be. 

Emily, it turns out, doesn’t exactly fuck around. The heavyset man from the bar-- Jordan, Rhett reminds himself-- rents the house next to theirs, and Rhett doesn’t feel better or worse for it. 

This whole thing just sits sourly in his stomach, and having Jordan within a hundred yards of them at all times isn’t his idea of a solution. When he mentions it to Link, he gets a shrug in response, and he forgets for nearly too long that Link is only here to have fun. 

With his shirt open, his shorts riding too low, and his mouth cracked wide open in a smile, Link tugs Rhett towards him in the bedroom. And before he can get any further than that, Rhett asks, “How do you know Emily?” 

What he really means is, “How much time have you spent in Malta?” but he keeps it simple for now. 

Link’s smile grows, his teeth sink into his bottom lip, and he says, “Friend of a friend.”

“Old flame?” And Rhett is grinning despite himself, because maybe he’s found a way to make Link squirm a little bit. Maybe he can sour this whole thing in the pit of Link’s stomach, too. 

Instead, it’s got Link laughing, hand on his belly as he says, “Emily? No way, man.” 

He leaves it there, leans up on his toes to press his mouth against Rhett’s in a chaste, careful kiss. When he walks away, Rhett is left with that same sourness on the tip of his tongue. Something about this whole thing is wrong. It feels wrong, and it feels like Link isn’t telling him something. 

Rhett supposes it isn’t entirely his business, but he’s stuck in the middle of this. He’s stuck here, with two armed guards following them as discreetly as possible wherever they go, and a man who wears _ Star Wars  _ shirts in public living next door to them as protection. Rhett, in all the years he’s been doing this job, has never needed protection. 

He’s fought his own fights, no guns necessary. 

Right up until he met Link. 

And Rhett has  _ stolen  _ from people. He’s snuck into their homes, their businesses, their storages and yachts and condos and sheds and cars, and he’s never once had to own a gun to feel safe. He’s been able to talk his way out of situations or use his fists to ease the way when necessary. The first and only time he’s pulled a trigger, he’d had Link murmuring in his ear the whole time. 

He’d had Link practically begging him to pull the trigger. 

He doesn’t regret it. 

He doesn’t like that he did it. It didn’t feel good or satisfying, but it felt necessary. In that moment, he’d been reshaped, reformed, but not  _ reborn _ . Link has dug his fingers into Rhett so far that there are indentions made just for him, but Rhett knows that they’re only surface-level. 

Link presses into them when Rhett finds him in the kitchen. The windows are open, letting in cool, damp air, and Rhett can smell salt from the sea. He can taste it on Link’s skin when he presses his mouth to his jaw. 

Link tilts his head to give rhett better access, and around his grin, he digs his fingers in a little deeper and says, “I love you, you know that?” 

They’ve said it. Of course they have, several times over, murmured into skin late at night, into the backs of necks early in the morning, over dinner, over drinks, over jobs and bloody noses. They’ve said it and they’ve meant it, but somehow this one is different. 

Link isn’t grinning anymore. He’s serious. He’s honest, flayed open and raw and making Rhett a promise. 

“Don’t get yourself killed,” Rhett says, feeling his throat get tight. His momma always said he was a crier, a sensitive boy, and his stomach coils tight when he realizes his eyes are burning. 

For what it’s worth, Link doesn’t call him out on it, doesn’t so much as acknowledge it when he says, “I won’t. I promise.” 

But he  _ could _ . There’s no promising that, something that’s outside of his control, and the idea that he’d throw those words around almost pisses Rhett off. He digs his fingers into Link, too, tries to get his own point across when he says, “No, Link--  _ don’t get yourself killed _ .” 

“What about you?” 

He’s grinning again, and Rhett tries not to think about it. “You won’t let anyone kill me.” 

“That’s right,” Link agrees, his fingers digging in all the harder. “Emily thinks she knows who it is.” 

Rhett heart beats in his throat, in his skull, on the back of his tongue. “Who?” 

“Some newbie,” Link says, tongue coming out to lick at his bottom lip. “Fresh meat.” 

Rhett flinches. “Don’t.” The implications of the term set Rhett’s teeth on edge. Paired with the look on Link’s face, how goddamn pleased he is by all of this, it’s enough to have Rhett’s skin crawling. 

“I wouldn’t worry,” Link is saying, and Rhett gives him a look that’s not much more than a raise of his eyebrows. “Emily knows what she’s doing.” 

“Why did you even go to her?” It’s not like Link needs  _ protecting _ . In fact, before now, Rhett would have sworn Link would find it insulting. He can handle his own. 

The question earns him a shrug, but it’s disingenuous. He’s fiddling with the bottom of his shirt, looking anywhere but at Rhett. There’s another shrug. “Needed some help with something.” 

“You didn’t need an armed guard,” Rhett argues. And maybe the ever so slight disruption of their lives is what’s really bothering him. Maybe it’s that he can’t walk outside without seeing two pairs of eyes on him, tracking his every move. Not much has changed, really, but evidently just enough changed. 

It tastes sour when he realizes it. 

“Who do you think it is?” 

Link’s shrug burns through him like fire. He’s so goddamn calm, so put together for a man who’s got someone hunting him down like one of the treasures in his basement. This feels like the inverse of everything, like Link is allowing this one situation to change and reshape their whole life. It’s unfair. 

Rhett has been dragged into something yet again, and Link’s hand is still buried in his hair, his grip still strong. Rhett’s got no way of wriggling out. 

He sucks in a heavy breath, lets it out in a rush. “Who do you think it is?” he tries again.

“I don’t know yet,” Link says this time. “Emily says it’s some new, young face, but this feels like someone who knows what they’re doing.” 

“They sent someone to a known assassin’s house,” Rhett argues. “Doesn’t feel very professional.” 

Link braces himself on the counter, nods his head a little. “They sent someone to my house when I wasn’t there,” he says slowly, and Rhett gets it. 

“It was a flare.” It was a signal. 

With another slow nod of his head, Link eyes Rhett carefully. “Am I losing you?” 

The question stings, bright and sharp and right through Rhett’s soft parts. It isn’t easy, swallowing down the lump that’s been slowly forming in his throat all week. Harder still, to will the knot in his stomach to ease so he can reach over, put a hand on top of one of Link’s and tell him, “I’m right here.” 

“Are you, though? Feels like you’re out there, in the ocean.” 

His voice is low, careful. He’s  _ worried _ . And in a split-second Rhett remembers Link telling him he just wants to know Rhett will be there when he wakes up in the morning. He remembers Link finding him all the way in Georgia, at his parents’ house. 

Link may be able to pull the trigger on a gun without so much as flinching, feel the bones of someone else’s face cracking under the force of his fist, slip his fingers around a throat and squeeze until those tell-tale twitches of muscles giving up-- but he’s afraid of being alone. He doesn’t need protecting, but he likes knowing someone is there when he reaches out during a nightmare.

He’s faced with so much death, covered in it from head to toe sometimes, that having a solid, steady, breathing person next to him is comforting. Rhett  _ knows  _ this. 

Rhett promised him he wouldn’t run again, and he won’t. He isn’t in the ocean. He’s right here. 

He curls his fingers around Link’s, pulls him forward until he can slot their mouths together, lick at the seam of his lips until he’s sighing, opening up and letting Rhett in. He tastes sweet, like the sounds he’s making in the back of his throat. His hands move, carding through the hair at the back of Rhett’s head and holding him in place. 

The soft, slick sounds of their mouths smother every bad feeling Rhett’s got in the center of his chest. This is home, this feeling. Link’s fingers at his scalp and his tongue pressed against his own, the graze of his teeth across his bottom lip every so often. Nothing else matters, except for this. 

And when they pull away, Link leans forward to bury his face in Rhett’s chest, seeking comfort. Rhett is quick to give it to him. Link’s arms loop around his middle, and he nestles in ridiculously, groaning softly when Rhett’s arms come up, cradle him, fingers finding their way to Link’s hair. He holds him close, holds him steady. 

He makes him a promise: “I’m not going anywhere.” 

“You said that already,” Link says, muffled into Rhett’s chest. “I believe you.”

There’s another sigh, and Rhett doesn’t know which one of them it comes from. The house around them seems to be shifting, the tension between them draining out into the street, into the ocean. 

There’s a pause, and then Link is telling him, “Emily wants us to do a job for her.” 

It bristles at the back of Rhett’s neck. And it breaks in his chest, a barely concealed sob smoothing itself down in the back of his throat, and he doesn’t want to do this anymore. The air here is comfortable and inviting. He’s been able to think clearly here, far enough away from everything that he felt normal for just a beat, a pause in his life. 

He doesn’t want to taint this place more than it already is. “Can we leave, after?” 

When Link shakes his head, it shouldn’t feel like such a shock. It numbs the tips of Rhett’s fingers, a little bit like touching exposed wires. “Okay,” he says softly, because he doesn’t know how else he’s supposed to respond. 

“I’ll have clothes out for you later.”


	3. Underwater

His head is spinning, just a little bit. He isn’t going to give Link the satisfaction of thinking that Rhett likes when he picks out his clothes, but he does comment that he looks nice, thank you. 

And Link unceremoniously tugs Rhett forward by the belt loops on his shorts so he can slot their mouths together. Pressed against one another like this, hips and stomachs and chests and mouths, Rhett feels safe. He feels cared for and loved and warm, and then when Link pulls away, he feels reckless. 

But that’s always been his problem, hasn’t it? Link has a way of making him feel reckless. 

It’s easier than it was the first time, following Link out to the car he’s rented for tonight. This time, they waited until the sun was setting, the sky an angry orange, smeared and streaked with red as though it were wounded. Rhett follows the shape of the clouds as they drive. He traces them with the tips of his fingers against the window. He could trace the shape of his own scar on his shoulder if he felt like being dramatic. Instead, he watches the sky bleed. 

Link doesn’t drive any better here, but Rhett has learned to ignore it as best he can, focus his attention on something else. Tonight, he runs through the plan over and over. There’s no face to match up to the life they’re going to take, so he can’t read any lines and wrinkles to search for a reason why they should die tonight. 

That part hasn’t gotten any easier. He can follow along, get through the car ride, but giving shape to the abstract thought of watching a life eke out of a human being through an exit wound is never easy. It never stops tasting like blood and bile in the back of his throat. 

He never stops hearing that scream. 

Still, he lets Link reach over and lace their fingers together. All he feels there is skin and bones and the faintest of echoing pulses. Something in him always expects to feel something different, a different shape, maybe ash and something brittle, but it’s always warmth. It’s always skin and bones. 

There is no monster hiding beneath Link’s skin. He is man. He is beast. He is a tangled knot of both, nestled in the pits of Rhett’s stomach. 

Or maybe that isn’t entirely correct. Maybe Rhett’s the one nestled in Link’s stomach, kept and safe and warm for now. He wonders, distantly, what Link would do if somewhere were to try and carve Rhett out of him. 

He wonders what  _ he’d  _ do. 

That thought is outlined in blood, in screams that sound faintly like Frank’s if he rounds out the edges. And  _ oh _ . 

Oh, but he’s gotten himself lost in all of this. Oh, but he’d die for Link. 

He wouldn’t kill for Link. 

But happily, he’d allow his own self to be killed. 

He squeezes at Link’s warm hand in his own, looks out at the purpling sky. “A hotel, right?” he’s asking, and his voice sounds strange in the quiet of the car. They haven’t spoken since they left nearly twenty minutes ago. 

Link nods. He clears his throat, and Rhett watches his Adam’s apple bob. “And a shiny prize to be found.” 

“A ring, she said,” Rhett reminds him. Her text was pretty straight-forward, as few details as she could, written in vague code that Link didn’t fully understand. But Rhett knew, could weave his way through the confusion like it was a second skin for him. In that moment, he’d felt good. 

He’d felt useful. He still feels useful, like he’s slotting back into place. 

He still doesn’t want to do this, wants to go home, but it’s scratching an itch. Once he has his fingers around that ring, he knows it’ll ignite that familiar flame in him. 

Outside, the sky darkens, and inside, Rhett buzzes. Next to him, Link hums along to the song playing softly on the radio. 

The car hums, too. Everything feels alive, like he can feel more than just his and Link’s pulses in his palm. It’s as if he’s connected directly to the veins of the Earth, sharing breath. That’s a scary sense of power. 

They pull into a driveway, a monstrously tall building in front of them, illuminated in speckled breaths across the expanse of it. Rhett wonders which one they’ll be in soon, if they’ll have to do this in the dark. 

The car quiets, and so does Link, and Rhett’s legs wobble as he gets out. 

They went over everything before they left. It should be quick and easy. They shouldn’t take long. Link is sure of it. 

Inside, it’s impossibly busy. Too many bodies all in one place, too many cameras coming at them from all angles, and for a beat, he thinks Link might actually pose for one. Instead, he shifts. From cold and determined, the energy a job deserves, to light and happy, a man on vacation. 

“Hey, man. I’m checking in,” he says to the fresh young face behind the desk. They do have a reservation, tucked neatly behind a fake name that will match the one on the license Emily gave Link. Charles Lamont, fresh from the depths of Ohio, on vacation with his husband. 

If anyone asks, they’re adopting soon and wanted a vacation to themselves to celebrate. Rhett is comfortable in the alter-egos at this point. Sometimes he’s afraid he lost himself along the way, became one of these fake hims. 

Rhett can’t hear anything the boy behind the desk is saying, because all he feels is the gun on his hip and all he hears is Link’s voice, calm and collected as he says, “Can you put me on the top floor, by any chance?I want to give him a good view.” Rhett catches a wink, sees the boy smile stiffly, like he’s been trained. 

They’ll be on the top so that they aren’t spotted beforehand. No use getting close to throw a wrench into things. Rhett’s almost certain whoever is on the other end of this job doesn’t know who they are, but he supposes that doesn’t matter. The least suspicious they can be, the better. And if they keep this impersonal, there’s an upperhand. So, they’ll put some space between them and the room they’re headed to. 

Fifth floor, seven rooms from the elevator on the left-hand side.

They’ll need a key. That’s Rhett’s job. 

Rhett smiles at the other front desk agent, feeling his heart fluttering in his throat. They get keys, Link signs the registration card and listens to the spiel the young man-- Elias, his nametag says-- probably hears in his sleep, and then they’re making their way to the elevator. The key packet says their room number in thin black numbers: 1014. 

In the elevator, Link glances over at him, bumps his shoulder against Rhett’s playfully. It tugs a smile out of him involuntarily, but it certainly doesn’t make the jitters any better. He feels like all of his muscles have been pulled taut. 

They get off on the fourth floor because this is where Rhett keeps an eye out for maintenance or housekeeping. And if he doesn’t seem to see any, then he goes back to the desk. From there, it’s a bit trickier. But he’s got his fingers crossed it won’t get to that, to causing an actual scene in the middle of this hotel’s lobby. 

The hotel is nice. It’s draped in warm colors, inviting and calm in a way hotels typically aren’t. Then again, the whole Island has been like that. They’ve been succumbed in comfort, lavish as their stay has been. It’s hard to feel fake and sterile on an island, he supposes. And he thinks the sun set in here, nestled its way into the walls and carpet. He runs his fingers along the wall as they walk, tries to see if he can feel the warmth seemingly trapped there. 

They walk along the hall, quiet and determined, and end up at the end, in front of more elevators without luck. There’s a family in the elevator with them this time, and Link gives the little boy a high five, converses with the dad on the short ride to the seventh floor with them. He lies through his teeth about being at the end of the hall when they mention being annoyed at ending up so close to the elevators. 

They say their goodbyes as they unlock the door to their room, three doors from the elevator on the right. Rhett feels uneasy. 

But they keep walking, blending in, looking like the belong. Rhett counts the spaces in the pattern on the carpet, runs his fingers along the grooves in the walls. Anything to distract himself, to settle his nerves. 

A flash of a work shirt catches his eye. Just ahead of them, picking up the array of things left outside of doors. Minding his own business. 

This is where Rhett swipes the card out of the maintenance guy’s pocket. It would be easy-- he’s got his back turned away from them, bent over as he picks up a room service tray from the floor, and it’s almost too perfect. 

Quick fingers, careful not to get too close, and Link doesn’t so much as chance a glance over his shoulder as Rhett does it, just keeps walking ahead. His heart is pounding, his hands just on the border of being shaky. The plastic is cool on his fingertips, the keys rattling just once as he palms the whole thing as carefully as he can. The guy doesn’t even flinch. He had no idea Rhett got close. It’s painless, just about flawless, and Rhett feels like he’s slipped on a familiar skin. 

Cameras may have picked it up, but they’ll be long gone by the time anybody is watching those back to see what happened. Plus, they almost certainly will have other things to worry about, later. 

Link is grinning by the time Rhett catches up to him. It’s a grin that says he knew exactly how that would pan out, and Rhett immediately feels like a show pony. 

Honestly, he’s felt like that since they sat down and talked with Emily. Link doesn’t need to involve him in any of this. It’s his head with a price on it, not Rhett’s. This is his game. 

Rhett doesn’t pull any triggers. 

Rhett steals precious treasures from uppity rich people who flaunt too much. He swipes paintings and jewelry and antiques. 

And, apparently, he pickpockets hotel employees in the middle of Malta because Link asked him to. Which is why Link is parading him around like he’s one of Link’s valuables. It’s why he’s okay with dangling him off the precipice like this; he’s overconfident that Rhett can hold his own. 

God, he’s right, but-- 

But Rhett’s not the same as Link. He doesn’t pull any triggers. Just the one. Just for Link. 

The elevator is empty this time, and he doesn’t know why he feels so grateful. 

His heart is still pounding, his head spinning a little bit, and he feels a bit better by the time they’re walking into their room. It’s cool and clean in here, and he sucks in a huge breath, lets it out in a rush as the door clicks shut behind them. He hears Link latch it closed, lock it for good measure. 

“You good?” Link asks, one of his hands landing on Rhett’s lower back, sliding up the center of his spine before cupping at Rhett’s neck. His fingers are firm and sure. Rhett can feel the confidence rolling off of him in waves. 

“Yeah,” Rhett says, rubbing a hand over his face as he hands Link the keys. 

Link lets out a low sound, doesn’t take them. “Those are yours, baby. Your prize, not mine.” 

He knows what that means, and shoves the keys in his pocket anyway. It doesn’t feel like much of a prize. 

Link’s fingers on him do, though, and when he shifts, turns to pull Link close, he folds against him easily. This is better. He gets his arms around Link’s middle, but fights the urge to bury his face in his neck. Instead, he sighs when Link’s arms twine around his middle, too. 

Everything feels like it’s sitting in the center of his chest, big and important and unavoidable. But then there’s Link, who might be the sturdiest, surest thing in his life. 

Rhett is ready for all of this to be over. 

He’s ready to go home, to be home, to be done. 

He doesn’t want to do this anymore. 

“I think I’m going to quit after this,” Rhett says, right into the side of Link’s head. 

“Not me, I hope,” Link says, and it’s honest and sincere, and it forms a lump in Rhett’s throat that he can’t swallow. 

Shaking his head, he pulls Link tighter to him. When Link tilts his head up, grins up at Rhett, Rhett meets him in the middle, slots their mouths together sweetly. It isn’t much of a kiss, really, because they are in the middle of a job. 

There’s a time limit involved, and if they wait too long, they’ll lose their window of time. Rhett’s ears are ringing with it, and he'd much rather spend their time standing here doing this, but Link pulls away eventually. It’s with a soft sound, like he regrets pulling away. But then he’s licking his lips and standing up a little straighter, taking Rhett in for all of a few seconds. 

In a whirlwind, he’s across the room, pulling his phone out of his pocket-- the burner, not his personal, the one he’d turned off in front of Rhett before everything blew up around them-- and scrolling through pages of pictures and text messages. He says, “Emily’s pretty sure it’s 513.” 

“Pretty sure,” Rhett mirrors. And he fiddles with the keycard in the mess of keys he’d snatched. It’s innocuous, looks exactly like their own, except it’s about to do so much more damage. It’s attached to a lanyard that’s advertising some local energy drink. 

The lanyard is worn, from too many hands being on it for too long, and Rhett rubs at the soft fabric with his thumb. Now he’s left his mark on it, too. He’s worn it down a little bit, too. 

He’s worn it down the same as it’s worn him down. He’s a bit softer for all of this, too.

Link is tugging at the sheets on the bed, tossing the pillows around a bit to make them look slept on. He bunches the comforter up at the foot, so that it looks like they just tossed them off themselves. He turns the airconditioner down, closes the curtains in search of privacy. The chair under the desk gets rolled back a bit, turned and adjusted to Link’s height. He turns the TV on, flips through a few channels, lands on a random one. The remote gets misplaced. 

On his way to the bathroom, he winks at Rhett and leaves it at that. 

There’s a beat, and all Rhett can hear is the pounding in his ears. All he can feel is the thudding of his heart in his chest. All of his muscles feel too tight, his skin ill-fitting. There’s a wave of nausea that he can’t seem to swallow down, and-- 

And then there’s water running, a toilet flushing, some travel-sized bottles being emptied into the running shower. Link knows what he’s doing, and Rhett is feeling more and more like a prop. 

Link is a professional. Sometimes that’s easy to forget, lost in everything else he is, outside of this. 

They’ve done so few jobs that needed an elaborate setup that Rhett’s certain he’s never seen Link so thorough. 

And then it hits him. 

He’s got a hit out on him. He can’t be reckless this time. 

There can’t be a chance of him being caught, because this time he can’t have been here. No leaving visible handprints. No traceable evidence. 

No being careless. 

He can’t leave a breadcrumb trail in case they get lost on their way out. This needs to look as natural as possible. 

By the time the shower is shutting off, Rhett has rubbed at the lanyard so much his thumb is tingling, feeling staticy with too much sensation. He stuffs the entire thing into his back pocket. 

“Ready?” Link asks, looking refreshed, calm and careful and calculated. The harsh bathroom lighting in the background blurs around him like some sort of sick halo. 

Rhett nods, shrugs. He doesn’t know. He says, “Yeah.” It tastes sour on his tongue, feels wrong on its way out of his throat. 

So much about this feels too heavy. This isn’t like their other jobs. The gun on his hip feels like a canon, heavy and weighted. He’s sure if he looks, there will be a burn mark in its shape on his skin. 

Even still, he follows Link out of the door. 

It clicks shut behind them, and that’s the end of that. It’ll look lived in. They’ll be gone in an hour, and no one will know otherwise. 

The hallway is quiet. Rhett can hear the echoes of life going on behind the closed doors they pass by in the dozens, but otherwise, there’s nothing. There isn’t a hum of the building or a creak of the floors above or below. 

There’s nothing. 

The elevator ride is smooth and quiet. 

And then there’s Link, who can’t stop moving-- he bounces on the balls of his feet, smooths his hands over his shirt, tries his hardest not touch anything, not to touch Rhett. He runs his hands through his hair, pulls his phone out of his pocket just to check the time three times while they’re in the elevator alone. 

Rhett is wearing the clothes Link picked out for him, is going along with the motions, is here as a  _ prop _ . Somehow, above all of it, it’s this fidgeting that bothers him the most, he thinks. 

And he’s saying, “Quit it,” before he can stop himself. 

“Can’t help it, man,” Link says, grinning. “It’s a rush.” 

“Quit it,” Rhett says again, stern and serious, but never turning to look at Link as he does. 

Link used to look powerful to him, when they did a job. Now, something about this whole thing looks like a little boy getting ready for a fight. But there isn’t a fight. Link’s already won, a gun nestled in his pants, nervous energy fueling the fire. His hands will be moving before he gets a chance to think, and Rhett knows that now. 

The novelty of it has faded and this mostly just feels like a nuisance to him. 

He wonders if he can turn around now, make it back to the hotel room and not see how this plays out. He wonders if Link would leave him if he did. 

He wonders if Emily would kill him. 

He wonders if Link would let her. 

No, he doesn’t think any of that would happen, so he doesn’t know why he keeps walking, but he does. Judge and executioner, strolling down the hallway. 

And then they’re in front of the door. The numbers are carved into the placard on the wall, and they feel like a taunt. 

Rhett doesn’t open the door, but Link does, slipping the key from Rhett’s back pocket and sliding in before Rhett can chicken out. 

Rhett and the devil, standing in the doorway. 

There’s a commotion, and Link’s voice as the door clicks shut behind them, saying, “Oh shit, man. Sorry, they must have given me the wrong room number.” 

But they aren’t leaving. Link is walking forward, and they’re staring at a face so young Rhett’s stomach turns. 

He can’t be more than nineteen years old, sitting on the foot of the bed, with a pillow over his lap and a girl cowering into the headboard, and Rhett wants to leave. 

They must have gotten the wrong room. Emily messed up. They messed up. 

Only there’s a gun being pointed at them, the boy’s other hand still holding a pillow to his crotch. A second gun, definitely from Link, and a laugh that’s violent and chilling tumbling out of Link’s frame. 

“Caught you at a bad time?” Link is asking, and there’s a click of a gun and then there’s another. 

Rhett catches the look on Link’s face, the grin, the raised eyebrow. The room feels still. The airconditioner is running in the corner, the girl is murmuring some sort of plea for this to stop, trying to get the boy to put the gun away. 

“Shut up!” he yells, and Link yells back, loud and serious with a, “Hey! That’s no way to treat a lady. Apologize.” 

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” the kid asks, and his gun trembles with his hand. Rhett’s sure he could hear a rattle if he tried hard enough. 

Link’s is steady, sure. The only time his hands don’t shake is when he’s holding a gun. “I’m Link. Apologize to her.” 

The gun in the boy’s hand raises shakily, stupidly, until it’s pointed at Link’s head instead of his chest. “Who the  _ fuck  _ do you think you are?” he asks again. 

On autopilot, on instinct, on some sort of Pavlovian response, Rhett’s gun comes flying out of its holster, pointed directly at the boy’s head. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He only knows his veins are fluttering, his stomach on fire. 

“Put the gun down,” he tells the boy, trying not to catch Link’s face out the corner of his eye. 

There’s a laugh, nervous and trying and so far out of his comfort zone. And then, “This your fucking-- your boyfriend or something?” 

“Yeah,” Link says, laughing. “Yeah, he is.” Link lowers his gun. He tucks it back into his pants, and Rhett feels his mouth go dry. This isn’t what he wanted. This isn’t how this needed to go. “Hey, why don’t you go ahead and get out of here, sweetheart?” he says to the girl. 

She’s crying, nodding, scrambling off the bed. The room around them pulses as she gathers her clothes from the floor. None of them move. They don’t look at her. Rhett can feel his pulse in his hand. 

He can feel his pulse in the handle of the gun. 

His finger is over the trigger. 

Link tucked his gun back into his pants. 

“What’s your name?” Link asks, the door clicking shut behind the girl scrambling to get out. 

The boy makes an irritated sound, gets his other hand on his gun, and Rhett sees how he’s shaking. His whole body is trembling, his nerves rolling off of him in waves. He doesn’t want to kill him. 

He’s completely naked now, the pillow on the ground in front of him.

Rhett doesn’t want to kill him. 

The boy’s finger is curling around the trigger, careful and angry. He’s nervous. He’s never done this before. 

“The first one fucks you up,” Rhett says. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Shut up,” he says. “I’ve killed before.” 

“No you haven’t,” Link says, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re what? Nineteen? You ain’t killed before, boy.”

“What’s your name?” Rhett asks, tries to keep the flutter out of his voice. 

He can see the flare of nostrils, the flex of the muscles in his back. Rhett pays attention to the way his leg moves, the shift of his hands on the gun. There’s a heavy pause, but then he’s licking his lips and saying, “Max.” 

“Who do you work for?” Link asks, tilting his head.

“I don’t work for anyone, man!” Max says, and he’s getting louder. He’s getting more aggressive. Rhett wants Link to take his gun out again. 

Rhett doesn’t want to kill him. 

The first one fucks you up. 

The second one-- 

He doesn’t want a second one. 

“Who do you work for?” Link asks again, more pointed this time, grin curling up around the edges. And then there’s his gun again. He keeps it in one hand, points it low because Rhett’s got it pointed high. “I imagine you’d like to fuck a girl like that again someday, yeah?”

Max changes his stance, widens, tries to seem big even though he’s naked, caught between the two of them. They’ve got the upperhand. 

Rhett doesn’t want to kill him. 

He thinks about lowering his gun, but doesn’t know where that will land them. Instead, he focuses on not trembling, too. 

“I know who’s got the hit out on you,” Max says. “I could use the money.” 

“You won’t get it,” Link says, shrugging. “They won’t give money to some nineteen-year-old kid who got sloppy.” 

There’s a scowl that’s almost sad on the kid’s face, and Rhett winces. “I’m twenty-six.” 

“They’ll kill you for killing me.” 

“How do you know that?” It’s not the question he really wants answers to, but Rhett knows the other one will sting too much. Rhett knows he settled on that one out of curiosity. 

Link laughs again, gun never faltering. Not like Rhett, who can feel himself starting to shake. “Do you know how many kids like you I’ve killed? Come on, man. I’ve been in this game longer than you’ve been alive.” 

“Fuck you,” Max says. 

Rhett’s mouth is dry, and Link laughs again, loud and real. “Who do you work for, Max?” 

Someone pulls a trigger, and the timer starts. There’s the smell of gunpowder, and a shout, but Rhett doesn’t know from who, and then he realizes it’s him after a second. It’s him yelling, his lungs burning but he hasn’t been shot. He’s yelling at Link. 

He’s yelling, “Don’t fucking kill him! Don’t kill him!” 

He’s just a kid. Rhett doesn’t want to kill him. He hasn’t killed anyone before. “Don’t kill him!” he’s yelling. 

And Link is looking at him, angry and serious, and he raises his gun to Max’s head. 

Max is crying. 

He’s pissed himself. 

“Don’t kill him,” Rhett says. They don’t have much time, and Link looks pissed. He’s still got his gun pointed at Max’s head. 

He tells Rhett, “What the fuck.” 

“He’s a kid, Link.” They don’t have much time. There’s time to have this conversation later. They didn’t get the information they needed, didn’t get the ring, but Rhett can’t watch this kid die. 

He doesn’t want to kill him. He thinks he might be having a panic attack. 

His gun is lowered, and he notices that Max’s is on the floor in front of Link. He must have dropped it when Link pulled the trigger. There’s a bullet lodged into the carpet next to his foot, and he’s changed his stance. He isn’t making himself bigger anymore.

He’s curling in on himself, shivering, crying, begging, “Please, please. Don’t kill me, please. Don’t kill me. Please, I’ll tell you.” 

He’s choking on his own mucus, on his own tears, and Link scoffs.

“Her name is Sheila. She’s-- She--” And he’s diving for his gun in a heart-pounding second, flinging himself onto the floor, but Link is quick. Link is good at his job. 

The shot rings out like all the others did. Rhett traces the blood splatter with tears building in his eyes. His body crumples to the ground, and Rhett can hear the commotion start outside in the hall. Max twitches, his limbs splayed out before him. 

Rhett can’t stop looking. He doesn’t want to look at Link. 

He can smell the gunpowder in the air. He can still hear the ringing. He can feel the silence washing over everything. 

It’s an odd feeling, being in the room with a dead body. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get over it. 

He didn’t want to kill him. 


End file.
